What part of it sounds like a myth? There are countless well documented cases of cannibalism in communist countries in the last century. North Korea is probably the most backward oppressed place on earth, I’m not surprised at all. Communists will gladly let their population starve to the point of cannibalism to hold power, what’s more surprising is that some don’t see that and continue to promote communism.

What I find amazing is that their grip on power is tight enough to be able to retain control while the people resort to cannibalism. If your workforce is too weak to work, and your army can’t get fed, how do you hold on to power? Pretty soon, you find a mutiny on your hands, and you have nothing to fight back with.

The army and party officials have food, it’s the rural areas that are hit the hardest by famine. The Kim dynasty knows they have to keep the army and officials fed and happy since they would be the ones that would launch a coup. The peasant workers in the fields don’t have the organization, weapons or training to revolt without being crushed by the authorities.

Much of the agriculture in NK has been diverted to heroin production (at times). Kim needs hard currency to keep his army and officers happy so the state has been known to produce heroin to sell on the world market. Not sure if they are still doing that (it was 10+ years ago when production in Afghanistan was lower than it is now).

“Evidence of widespread cannibalism was documented during the Holodomor. The Soviet regime printed posters declaring: “To eat your own children is a barbarian act.”More than 2500 people were convicted of cannibalism during the Holodomor.”

“Some scholars and politicians using the word Holodomor emphasize the man-made aspects of the famine, arguing that it was genocide; some consider the resultant loss of life comparable to the Holocaust.[13] They argue that the Soviet policies were an attack on the rise of Ukrainian nationalism and therefore fall under the legal definition of genocide.[14][15][16][17][18] Other scholars argue that the Holodomor was a consequence of the economic problems associated with radical economic changes implemented during the period of Soviet industrialisation.”

-Either way, whether it was a premeditated act of genocide on the part of Stalin or a result of disastrous economic policies, both fall squarely under the consequences of communism

The fact is that communism has a rich history of bringing misery, death, murder, and poverty to the point of cannibalism upon the people unlucky enough to find themselves under it. The idea that this cycle is repeating in North Korea, a country under incredibly tough international sanctions that all but preclude it from having a normal functioning economy is not far fetched at all. Communists have repeatedly shown a willingness to force their people to resort to cannibalism in order to maintain or expand their power. Why do you think we were so terrified during the cold war that maybe they’d be willing to sacrifice a few hundred million of their own people in a nuclear exchange? Because the communists regard people as worthless and entirely expendable for the glorious cause.

The Cultural Revolution. Ritual cannibalism of enemies/victims of the Red Guard was said to have been practiced in a number of instances. It was meant as an instrument of terror. I can’t cite a specific source, but a survivor of that period included references to these acts of ritual canibalism in her acounts of that ordeal.

Ritual cannibalism was practiced in Cambodia during the Viet Nam war. I don’t know if the practice was picked up by the Khmer Rouge, however.

Such behavior was widely documented during the Russian Civil War. And in the Ukraine. And during the Cultural Revolution, though this was more a revolutionary policy to spread culpability and collective guilt among difficult populations. Now, North Korea. Communists eat their dead.